January 2017

by Susan Crawford. Reprinted from BackChannel. Read the original article. It may be the governor. In the State House. With the lobbyists. This is the story of a dramatic failure of imagination and vision at the state level: Governor Charlie Baker’s apparent insistence that Massachusetts relegate small towns to second-rate, high-priced, monopoly-controlled (and unregulated) communications [...]

With the start of the new year, we want to thank your supporters and share with you our new plans for moving forward in 2017. As you may know, in late 2015 Governor Baker placed a ‘pause’ on all state Last Mile Broadband projects. In May 2016 the Baker Administration lifted the ‘pause’ and named [...]

December 2016

Dear Delegate: The letter and accompanying resolution below has been sent to all town leaders. We urge you to meet with your Selectboard and urge them to consider passing the resolution. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Dear Town Leader: The years-long effort [...]

There is a conspicuous lack of mention of regional solutions despite regionalization being brought up to Bill Ennen and several MBI Board members as a solution addressing the sustainability and complexity of managing town owned networks.

MBI was initially funded and created by emergency legistlation in 2008 with a mandate to bring broadband internet service to all 45 unserved communities. Instead, they spent $80M building the MB123 middle mile to 123 communities which they claimed would attract private companies to finish the last mile. It never did and now is a hindrance to [...]

By Steve Nelson (reprinted from Berkshire Eagle, Broadband effort gets back on track, October 12, 2016 ) You will soon see work crews standing around utility poles, gazing upward. They'll not only be checking the cables on those poles, but looking as well toward the future of broadband in western Massachusetts. The long-awaited project to bring high-speed internet [...]